questions are administered accordingly. So US respondents may get some
differing questions/presentations/choices than Australians or Brazilians.
larry
At 02:52 PM 11/30/2003, you wrote:
>I take it the author is British as the examples look like British
>politicians. I am more pragmatic and to the right of Charles Kennedy,
>whoever that might be. It seems to think I am fairly left-wing; I think my
>answers on language culture and immigration have a lot to do with that.
>
>Dana
>
> > To add just a bit. The author used one form of factor analysis I
> > don't necessarily like, called principle components analysis. Without
> >
> > going into detail it makes some assumptions about how the individual
> > items are related to each other, frequently overestimating this
> > communality. Its good for a first estimation of the underlying
> > factors, and for the initial development of a questionnaire, but for
> > determining the actual structure of the factors involved, I think its
> >
> > inadequate.
> >
> > I'll be downloading the data today and using some other analysis on
> > it later today and see what I come up with.
> >
> > larry
> >
> > >I think that this survey is much more valid than the other ones we've
> > tried.
> > >
> > ><http://politics.beasts.org/>http://politics.beasts.org/
> > >
> > >FWIW, here are my scores:
> > ><http://politics.beasts.
> > org/scripts/results?surveyid=838428544>http://politics.beasts.
> > org/scripts/results?surveyid=838428544
> > >
> > >AxisPosition
> > >1left/right-7.2199 (-0.4346)
> > >2pragmatism+2.2182 (+0.1335)
> > >
> > >Anyhow the following is part of the rationale of the survey given by
> > >its authors.
> > >--
> > >politicalcompass.org is a web site which asks a number of opinion
> > >questions of its visitors, and then places them in a two-dimensional
> > >space which is supposed to characterize their political views.
> > >Unfortunately, politicalcompass.org has a poor reputation; in
> > >particular, there is a suspicion that its questions are designed to
> > >make respondents lean towards an economically right-wing, socially
> > >liberal ("right libertarian") position, and the two axes of
> > variation
> > >on which results are plotted are opaque in their derivation and may
> > >not be tremendously relevant.
> > >
> > >These suspicions are compounded by the problem that
> > >politicalcompass.org's methods are not open and, therefore, it is
> > not
> > >possible to determine whether their selection of questions carries a
> > >bias which its operators are using to further their own ends.
> > >
> > >The purpose of this site is to do a survey of this type properly and
> > >openly, so that the methods and data in use are open to inspection.
> > >More detail
> > >
> > >The proper way to do this is to collect a bunch of questions and a
> > >bunch of answers to them, then take the space defined by all the
> > >answers to the questions, and construct a spanning basis for it. The
> > >natural way to do this is with principal components analysis, though
> > >as a non-statistician I can't comment on whether this is actually
> > the
> > >best approach. We should then be able to discover -- in terms
> > defined
> > >by the answers to the questions set -- the significant axes of
> > >variation in the data.
> > >
> > >This means that all the results we get are defined by the data: we
> > do
> > >not measure anyone's views according to criteria we set out, but
> > >according to endogenous criteria. The only points at which our
> > >judgment enters the method are
> > >
> > > * when choosing questions (or, rather propositions); and
> > > * when we give context to the results.
> > >
> > >The first of those shouldn't matter, if the questions are reasonably
> > >unbiased and cover a wide enough range of subject materials. The
> > >second doesn't matter, since it's just a presentational issue.
> > >--
> > >
> > >So far I'm going over their analysis, and looking at how they did
> > the
> > >factor analysis, it looks pretty good so far. I'm going download
> > >their data over the weekend and run it through a few of my stats
> > >programs (SPSS for the factor analysis and AMOS for the causal
> > >modelling/path analysis) and see if it holds. but my first
> > impression
> > >by looking at their published eigenvectors, is that it looks legit.
> > >
> > >larry
> > >
> >[
>
>----------
>[
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